


Second Chances

by Forlorn Kumquat (sara_wolfe)



Series: Imagine Tony and Bucky [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Kid Fic, Kid Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 02:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13354437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/pseuds/Forlorn%20Kumquat
Summary: Even after fighting side-by-side to defeat Thanos, things between Tony and Bucky are still rocky. But an accident may give them the second chance they need to build their relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Imagine Tony and Bucky](http://imaginetonyandbucky.tumblr.com/) community on Tumblr. 
> 
> Prompt: Tony is odd man out. Everything he does seems to offend or annoy the team, so when he's magically deaged it isn't the love-fest you typically see. The Avengers aren't monsters, they take care of his basic needs but their patience is thin, they aren't affectionate and they mostly leave him alone with JARVIS... Just like how Tony's parents treated him. Cue Bucky who has mostly been hiding in his room until he finds a crying Kid!Tony. They become inseparable and it helps them both...

“…less than two weeks since the last alien attack by Thanos, and cleanup still continues downtown-”

Tony jerked awake as the tv in the corner of the workshop suddenly flared to life, almost falling off his stool. Only a hand on his shoulder kept him from ending up in a pile on the floor, and then a red-clad hand moved into his field of vision to peel away the paper that had been stuck to Tony’s cheek. Tony took the crumpled piece of paper out of Peter’s outstretched hand, trying futilely to smooth out the wrinkles obscuring the new tech upgrades he’d been working on before he’d fallen asleep at the desk. 

“Mr. Stark? Hey, Mr. Stark?” Tony turned slowly toward the sound of Peter’s voice, realizing after a second that, from the slightly panicked look on the teenager’s face, Peter had been trying to get his attention for a while, now. 

“Hey, kid,” Tony rasped out, barely recognizing the sound of his own voice. He sounded like he was trying to gargle with gravel. 

Peter’s shoulders slumped with obvious relief. “Geez, Mr. Stark,” he grumbled, “you weren’t answering me, and you just kept staring at the desk, and you were starting to freak me out.” Tony opened his mouth to apologize, but Peter continued, undaunted, “I thought you’d had a stroke, or something.”

“I am not that old,” Tony told him, irritatedly. 

“No, but you are under that much stress,” Peter countered, smoothly. “Why are you falling asleep down in the workshop, anyway? Don’t you have a huge bed, upstairs?”

“Boss has been sleeping down here for the last three nights,” FRIDAY spoke up before Tony could say anything, and Tony glared up at the ceiling. 

“Traitor,” he complained. “You’re supposed to be on my side.” 

FRIDAY ignored him. “Boss has barely left the workshop since the day the ex-Avengers moved back into the Compound,” she informed Peter, a distinctly-disapproving note in her voice. Tony wondered briefly if it was in response to his hermit-like behavior, or to the presence of Rogers and the rest of his newly-pardoned team in the Compound. “He’s been eating down here, sleeping down here-”

“Thanks, FRI,” Tony cut her off, quickly. “I think Peter gets the picture.”

“And he’s getting sick,” FRIDAY finished, ignoring Tony once again. 

“I am not getting sick,” Tony protested.

“You’re getting sick,” Peter insisted, as FRIDAY backed him up. “You sound like crap, Mr. Stark.”

“I sound like-” Tony started, but then he cut himself off, eyes narrowing in suspicion as he realized exactly what Peter was wearing. “Why are you in your suit? Don’t tell me you’re out patrolling at-”

“Ten a.m.,” FRIDAY filled in for him, when Tony trailed off expectantly. 

“Patrolling at ten in the morning,” Tony continued. “Peter, we had an agreement; what about school?” He tried out his best imitation of Howard Stark’s ‘I’m disappointed in your choices,’ tone, but from the unimpressed look on Peter’s face, he’d fallen far short of the mark. 

“First of all, it’s Saturday,” Peter told him. “And second, I wasn’t patrolling. I wasn’t!” he insisted, when Tony shot him a disbelieving look. “I was out at Mercy Children’s Hospital. They reached out to Spider-man to have him come visit the kids. I signed some autographs, took some pictures, swung a few kids around the hallways-”

“I hope you cleaned up your webbing,” Tony said, getting a grin from the teenager. 

“Anyway, I just wanted to stop in and check in with you before I took off for the airport,” Peter told him.”

“Airport?” Tony echoed, feeling like he was missing something. FRIDAY helpfully popped up a holographic projection of his calendar, with ‘Peter - DC’ circled in bright red. “Oh, yeah, you’ve got that academic decathlon thing, again.”

“I don’t have to go, though,” Peter said, still looking worriedly at him. “I mean, you really don’t look good, Mr. Stark. And Rhodey’s not here, or Ms. Potts, or Colonel Danvers, -”

“And I am a grown man who doesn’t need you guys hovering around, running interference between me and Cap’s team,” Tony finished for him. “Go to DC, Peter. Have fun, crush the competition, and if something comes up, Rhodey and Pepper are in DC, and Pepper’s being dying to take her new Rescue suit out on the town.”

“You sure?” Peter asked, and he didn’t sound sure at all. 

“I’m serious,” Tony told him. “Get out of here, kid.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed, and then before Tony could stop him, Peter lunged forward and wrapped his arms around Tony in a tight hug. “Bye, Mr. Stark,” he said, as he just as quickly detached himself and headed for the door. “I’ll see you in a few days!”

“We’re still not in a hugging relationship!” Tony called after him, watching Peter dart out the door and duck around a figure headed toward the workshop. “I’m not hugging you, either,” he added, as the man stepped through the doorway. 

Barnes froze, a comically-horrified expression crossing his face. “I-um-you-no-”

“That was a joke,” Tony said, pointedly, taking pity on him, and Barnes’ shoulders slumped in obvious relief. “What do you want, Barnes?”

Barnes moved slowly into the middle of the lab, looking extremely uncomfortable to be in the heart of Tony’s sanctuary. A small, petty part of Tony was pleased by the reaction; the last thing he wanted was any of Cap’s team starting to get chummy enough to come bother him down in his lab. 

But, discomfort didn’t stop Barnes from moving over to Tony’s desk. “Arm’s been running hot,” he explained, stretching out his prosthetic arm until his fingers just rested on the top of the desk. 

“This is Wakandan technology,” Tony said, even as he gestured for FRIDAY to pull up the specs T’Challa had sent him about Barnes’ new arm. “You gonna tell me all those brains, and no one thought to put some kind of cooling system in your arm?”

“No, they did,” Barnes replied. “But, I took some damage during the fight with Thanos, and I tried fixing it myself so I didn’t have to bother anyone, and I thought I did okay, but by the time I realized there was a problem, T’Challa had already gone back to Wakanda-”

“His Highness left over a week ago,” Tony reminded him, as Barnes fell into an awkward silence. “Have you seriously been going all that time with a malfunctioning arm?” Barnes’ guilty silence was the only answer he needed, and Tony sighed in exasperation. “Come over here where there’s more light,” he ordered, going over to another table with tools spread across the surface, Barnes trailing silently behind him. Tony grabbed a nearby stool and dragged it closer so Barnes had somewhere to sit while he was working. “So, how hot is hot?”

“Hot enough to start feeling it in my neck,” Barnes admitted. “Right where the prosthetic meets skin.”

“FRIDAY, analysis,” Tony ordered, as Barnes pulled his tee-shirt off to give Tony better access to his arm. “What kind of temperatures are we looking at, here?”

A thin beam of bright blue light moved over the surface of Barnes’ arm as FRIDAY scanned the prosthetic, and she projected the results on a holographic display next to Barnes’ head. Tony poked at the display, scrolling through temperature readings of the various bits and pieces of Barnes’ arm, frowning. 

“Do you know just how close you are to your arm shutting down due to overheating?” he asked, not really expecting an answer. “I’d like to open your arm up, if you’ll let me, to see what kind of internal damage we’re talking about here.” Barnes was silent for so long that Tony tore his eyes away from the holographic display to see the other man staring at him in something like shock. “What?” Tony prompted. 

“No one’s ever asked permission before,” Barnes finally told him, quietly. “HYDRA, well, they were HYDRA and they didn’t really give a shit about what I wanted, and even the Wakandan scientists put the new arm on while I was still in cryo, so they never actually asked me, either.”

“Well, it’s your arm,” Tony reminded him. “If you don’t want me poking around inside, I’ll do what I can to bleed off the excess heat and call T’Challa or someone else you trust to take a look at it.”

“I trust you,” Barnes said, looking as surprised as Tony felt as the words left his lips. 

“Huh,” Tony replied, at a loss for how to reply. 

He and Barnes hadn’t been alone together since the fight against Thanos, and they’d certainly never talked about Siberia, and Tony had been pretty certain that Barnes still hated Tony for trying to kill him. Apparently he’d been wrong about that. 

“Thanks,” he finally said, moving around the table to where he could get a better look at the part of Barnes’ arm he needed to open up. “So, I’m just gonna pop this open back here. You might feel a little something, but let me know if it hurts, okay?”

After Barnes nodded, Tony opened the section on the back of his prosthetic that gave access to the central and most powerful of the microprocessors in the arm, and the one most likely to have sustained damage during the fight. Grabbing the tools he needed, Tony began looking for the damage that could be causing Barnes’ overheating problem. 

The lab was silent except for the droning of the television in the background with Tony absorbed in his work, and Barnes reluctant to disturb him while he was deep in focus. But Tony never could stand silence for too long, so he did what came naturally - he started talking. 

Not about anything specific at first; really whatever came to mind at that moment. The latest dirt the gossip rags were sure they had on him which were, of course, all lies, Peter’s newest report from his nightly neighborhood patrols, the haircut Pepper was considering. Anything to keep the lab from falling quiet again. He wasn’t sure Barnes was even listening to him. But then-

“T’Challa told me about your BARF technology,” he blurted out, when Tony paused to take a breath. “When I first woke up in Wakanda, I didn’t remember what was going on, and I panicked, and I hurt some people before they could restrain me. And the scientists tried, but those code words are still in my head, and I could be used to hurt people again, and I don’t want anyone to have that kind of control over me, ever again. T’Challa thought your BARF device might help, and I thought, if you’d let me-”

He seemed to run out of steam, trailing off into an awkward silence and looking anywhere in the room that wasn’t at Tony. Color stained his cheeks and his flesh-and-blood hand was gripping the edge of the table hard enough that Tony wondered if he was going to dent the metal. 

“Anyone ever tell you about my time in Afghanistan?” he asked, rather than replying to Barnes’ explosion of words, and Barnes shot him a startled look before slowly nodding. “When I first woke up in that cave,” Tony continued, quietly, “I was lying on a table with my chest open and sharp instruments poking around inside. The next time I woke up, I was strapped to a car battery that was powering the electromagnet that was keeping me alive. The next three months weren’t much better.”

Tony had to stop for a moment, his voice shaking and his breathing becoming ragged as he dredged up old memories. “I, um, I kept having bad mornings, even after I came home,” he went on, when he was sure his voice would be steady again. “I’d wake up and I couldn’t remember where I was. I was back in that cave every morning for months after I came home. Even now, when it’s been ten years, sometimes I still wake up in that cave.”

He didn’t add that Siberia had triggered a brand-new round of cave nightmares, where his brain superimposed the memory of Steve smashing his arc reactor with the memory of being operated on without anesthesia. He wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable with Barnes. 

“I don’t know what you’re going through,” he finally finished, finally looking up at Barnes, “but I know what it’s like to be haunted by your own mind. And I think after everything you’ve been through, you deserve some peace. I can’t promise you that BARF will fix everything,” he cautioned. “I don’t know how you’re expecting it to work-”

“I’m not really expecting anything,” Barnes interrupted him. “But, anything’s got to be better than doing nothing and waking up screaming every night, right?”

“Exactly,” Tony said, grateful that Barnes was getting his point without him having to go into any more detail. “All right, well, I fixed a damaged heat sink that was causing your overheating issue, and you should be fine, going forward.”

“Thanks,” Barnes said, getting off the stool and pulling his shirt back on. “This is-I-”

“Sorry to interrupt,” FRIDAY spoke up, suddenly, cutting off whatever Barnes was about to say, “But there’s a report on the police band of a giant octopus in Central Park.”

Tony and Barnes both froze, looking at each other for a moment before looking up at FRIDAY’s nearest camera. “I’m sorry, what?” Tony asked. 

“Giant octopus, boss,” FRIDAY replied. 

“Giant octopus,” Tony echoed, shaking his head in disbelief. “If this is Richards’ fault, I’m going to kick his elastic ass.”

“I’ll help,” Barnes muttered, and Tony took a moment to be pleased that someone else was as fed up by Reed Richards’ shit as he was. 

“FRI, have the police put in a call for the Avengers, yet?” Tony asked. 

“Call’s coming in now, Boss,” FRIDAY told him.

“Am I good to fight?” Barnes asked, even as he was already headed toward the elevator doors to go to the Quinjet hanger. 

“You’re good,” Tony told him, moving into the center of the lab, where FRIDAY began the process of wrapping him in the armor. Just before the faceplate clicked into place, he added, “I’ll meet the team there.”

“Save some of the fun for us,” Barnes called out just before the elevator doors closed.


	2. Chapter 2

“Can’t this bucket go any faster?” Bucky grumbled, glaring out the window as Manhattan flew by below them. 

It was taking longer than he liked for them to get to Central Park; every minute they were up in the air was a minute that Stark spent alone facing off against a giant freaking octopus. And possibly whatever or whoever made the giant freaking octopus. 

“Don’t let Stark hear you call his precious Quinjet a bucket,” Clint grumbled from the pilot’s seat. “I swear, he likes these machines better than he likes people.”

“He certainly treats the machines better,” Wanda spoke up. 

“Enough chatter,” Steve broke in, before a full-scale bitchfest could break out. “Focus on the mission, people.”

They arrived at Central Park not too long after that, flying in a circle over the head of a giant, tentacled monster that had to be at least thirty feet tall. Bucky leaped from the back hatch of the Quinjet before it had even landed, Steve’s shouts to wait for the team ringing in his ears, and he aimed his landing for the top of the octopus’s head. 

Trying to avoid the waving arms as he fell, Bucky could see a red and gold figure darting around in the periphery, blasts from the repulsors distracting the monster from the Quinjet hovering overhead. Bucky landed squarely on top of the beast’s head, but his arrival seemed to go completely unnoticed by the octopus. His boots weren’t even making dents where he stood on the slippery skin. Trying to keep his balance as the skin moved underneath his feet, he made his way as fast as he could toward the monster’s eyes, hoping to find a vulnerable area. The rest of the team had disembarked from the Quinjet to land on the ground around the octopus, surrounding it, while Sam joined Stark in the air. 

Static crackled as the radio in Bucky’s ear came to life, and then Steve’s voice, “Iron Man, what is this thing?”

“Nice of you to join the party, Cap.” Stark’s voice, even through his suit’s modulators, was dryly sarcastic. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, today’s guest of honor is a giant octopus.”

“I was hoping for more information than that,” Steve said, already sounding annoyed with Stark. “Like where it came from, maybe, or what it’s doing here?”

“And here I was just wasting time trying not to get eaten.” Stark fired a double-palmed blast at a tentacle sneaking toward Bucky, making the tentacle jerk wildly at the contact. Apparently he was no longer invisible to the monster. “I got here maybe five minutes before you did, Cap. Exactly how much about this thing do you expect me to know?”

“Her name is Giselle.” Bucky jerked as a new, non-Avengers voice came over their radio, silently cursing as he almost toppled off the top of the octopus’s head as it turned to meet the new arrival coming toward them. 

Stark was cursing, too, as Reed Richards and his team flew into view. “Goddamn it, Richards, did you do this?”

“If by ‘this’ you mean Giselle,” Richards said, “it was an accident. She was left unsupervised in my lab, and she got into a substance she shouldn’t have. And it seems to have enlarged her to rather massive proportions.”

“This thing is a lab experiment?” Bucky asked, dodging yet another waving tentacle. 

“Actually,” and this was Susan Storm, this time, “Giselle is a pet.”

Stunned silence greeted this statement, finally broken by Stark’s declaration of “Richards, I’m going to punch you in the fucking face.”

“I’m working on something that should restore Giselle to her usual state,” Richards said, while his team’s jet flew lazy circles around Giselle. “I just need you and your team to serve as a distraction, Tony. That would be a great help.”

Muttering a few, choice words under his breath, Stark swooped in circles around Giselle’s head, drawing the octopus’s attention to himself. Sam flew in larger circles counter to Stark’s path, taking turns with the other man in diving at the octopus and weaving around the waving tentacles. Abandoning his previous approach, Bucky jumped off Giselle’s head, grabbing a tentacle as he fell and using it to slow his momentum as he landed on the ground. Then, he joined Steve and Nat in distracting Giselle from one side, while Clint and Wanda took the other.

“You know, you could feel free to help out,” Stark called over the radio to Richards and his team, when they’d been silent for a few minutes. He grabbed a tentacle that was edging toward a pair of terrified-looking bike riders and yanked upward, throwing Giselle off balance and giving the bikers time to escape. “Seeing as it’s your team that caused this mess in the first place.”

“I’m almost finished,” Richards replied, absently. “I just need you to restrain Giselle for me, please. And don’t hurt her.”

“Don’t hurt her” Stark demanded, but Richards had fallen silent again, ignoring him. “Punch him in the face,” he muttered, switching radio channels so that only his team could hear him. 

“I’ll hold him still for you,” Bucky promised, wrestling a grasping tentacle to the ground to hold it steady. 

“We’ll all help,” Natasha promised, a dark tone in her voice as she helped Steve pin another tentacle to the ground. 

On Giselle’s other side, Wanda’s magic had another three tentacles restrained, and Vision had come from somewhere to help Clint with a fourth. That left two for Sam and Stark, who were flying overhead, trying to find the best angle. 

“I’m finished on my end,” Richards said suddenly over the radio. “Now, if you could just hold her steady-”

“Does he think we’ve been playing around up here?” Sam asked, rhetorically, and then he and Stark went into simultaneous dives, each grabbing onto a flailing tentacle and dragging it to the ground. 

Giselle was motionless for a few seconds as the FF’s jet lined up in front of her, a bright light glowing on the front of the jet. Then, all hell broke loose. Giselle flailed with one powerful tentacle, sending Sam flying across the park with a yell. Another, she wrapped around Stark, squeezing so hard Bucky could hear the suit creaking as it compressed inward. Stark screamed in pain, a short, high sound, and Bucky let go of the tentacle he was holding to grab onto the one attached to Stark, trying to pry it off. 

“Richards!” Steve yelled over the radio. “Whatever you’re going to do, do it now!”

“She’s moving too much!” Richards retorted. “I don’t want to risk hitting Tony.”

“Risk it!” Stark yelled, his voice cracking on the last word. “Damn it, Richards-”

The light on the front of the FF’s jet grew brighter for a moment and then a bright red beam shot out toward Giselle. The octopus flailed the tentacle holding Stark at exactly the wrong time, and the beam struck him square in the chest before hitting Giselle. Man and octopus glowed bright red for a few moments, the light bright enough to obscure them from view. When it faded, Stark was lying motionless on the ground next to an ordinary-sized octopus, one tentacle still wrapped stubbornly around his wrist. 

“Tony!” Steve called out, sharply. “Tony, are you okay?”

Nothing but silence for a moment, and then FRIDAY’s voice came over the radio. “Internal integrity of the suit has been compromised, and Boss is unresponsive,” she reported. “Assuming manual control and returning to the compound.”

“What about Tony?” Steve demanded, as the suit moved jerkily into a standing position and the repulsors fired up. “Is he hurt?”

“I do not know,” FRIDAY replied. “Returning to the compound for further analysis.” With that, the suit lifted shakily into the air and sped away toward the compound. 

Bucky watched the suit get smaller and smaller in the distance, before turning to see the Fantastic Four approaching them. Susan had scooped the octopus up off the ground, the creature snuggled in her arms. Richards was at the front of the group, a smile on his face. 

“Well,” he started, “I’m glad to see that our joint operation went so-”

His words cut off suddenly when Bucky punched him in the fucking face. With his metal arm. It felt really, really good. And when Steve just gave him that Look, full of patented Captain America exasperation, he grinned, sheepishly. 

“Well, someone had to do it.”

* * *

The flight back to the compound seemed to take even longer than the flight to the park. Bucky had to force himself to stand still, counting the seconds until they hit the landing pad. As soon as the wheels touched the landing pad, Bucky stormed out of the jet, followed closely by the rest of the team. 

“FRIDAY, where’s Tony?” Steve demanded, even as they automatically headed for his lab. 

“Boss is in his lab,” FRIDAY told them, as they bypassed the elevator for the stairs, Bucky still leading the way. The glass doors slid silently open as they reached the lab, lights blazing but no Stark in sight. 

“Tony?” Steve called out, looking around the room. “Tony, where are you?”

For a minute, Bucky thought FRIDAY had been mistaken; there was no one other than them in the room. But then he heard an almost-imperceptible whimper coming from the far corner, someone doing their best to hide from the team. As he got closer, the small, dark-haired child, barefoot and dressed in a tee-shirt far too large for him, pressed himself even further against the wall, visibly shaking and eyes wide with terror. There was something familiar about those eyes, and Bucky got a bad feeling in his stomach. 

“Steve?” he called out softly, not wanting to startle the child any more than he already was. “Steve, come over here.”

Steve came up beside him, and Bucky heard his sharp, indrawn breath as soon as he saw the boy. “Oh my god,” he whispered. “Tony?”


	3. Chapter 3

“I don’t know how this could have happened.”

Richards stared across the lab at Stark - no, Tony; even in his head, Bucky couldn’t keep referring to the obviously-terrified child by something as impersonal as his last name - stared down at Tony like he was studying a particularly-fascinating bug. Tony, still firmly ensconced in his corner, stared back, so still and quiet he might as well have been a statue. 

“Nothing in the device I used to reverse Giselle’s transformation should have caused this,” Richards went on, oblivious to Tony’s fearful reaction to him. “Let me take him back to my lab at the Baxter Building. I’ll study him and figure out how to reverse it. If it can be reversed.”

“No,” Bucky spoke up, before anyone else could, surprising even himself when he spoke. “You’re not taking him anywhere.” Richards opened his mouth to protest, but Bucky steamrolled right over him before he could say a word. “The kid is scared to death even here, in his home. You’re not taking him to some strange place to poke at and experiment on. He’s not some lab rat that you can dissect.”

Everyone, even Steve, looked shocked by his outburst. Hell, _he_ was shocked by his outburst. But, he knew what it was like to be scared and in a strange place, to have people staring at him like he was nothing more than a lab specimen. And something in that kid’s scared brown eyes roused every protective instinct in his body. 

Richards was the first to recover. “Without the ability to study Tony-” he blustered. 

“Bucky’s right,” Steve interrupted him. “You can study Tony however you need, here.”

That wasn’t exactly what Bucky had been talking about. He very adamantly did not want to subject Tony to tests of any kind. But he knew that they had to do something to figure out how to restore Tony to his former state. And that didn’t mean that he had to be happy about Richards doing the testing. 

“Tony stays here, with us,” he growled, making sure he had Richards’ attention. “And if you hurt him, or scare him, you’ll be answering to me.”

Richards, for the first time since Bucky had met him on the battlefield fighting Thanos, was wisely silent. He just nodded. “I’d like to start with a physical examination,” he finally said. “With scans from the AI to see if it can detect any abnormalities.”

“With pleasure,” FRIDAY said, the first time she’d spoken since they’d entered the lab. 

“I’ll get Tony,” Steve added, going over to the corner where Tony was still hiding. 

He bent down to pick Tony up, and a second later, Bucky heard him yell in surprised pain as Tony kicked him squarely in the groin. As Steve reeled backward, Tony darted out of his corner and headed straight for the door. Nimbly dodging the hands reaching for him, Tony tried to force open the doors FRIDAY was keeping closed, and when they wouldn’t budge, spun around and headed for the windows. 

Richards stretched out an arm as Tony passed him, snagging the boy around the chest and dragging him backward across the floor. Tony let out a wordless shriek, beating at Richards’ arm, and when that didn’t work, twisting as much as he could in the grip and sinking his teeth into Richards’ arm. Richards cursed and let go of Tony, but he was finally close enough for Bucky to grab, swinging Tony up into the air and depositing him on the same lab table Tony had worked on his arm at earlier that morning. 

His brief attempt at rebellion quelled, Tony huddled on the table, a miserable look on his face as he cringed away from all the people staring at him. He was silent as Richards circled him on the table, flinching when Richards poked or prodded him but otherwise remaining motionless. It looked like all the fight had drained out of him with that one escape attempt. Richards was quiet as he conducted his examination, just a few words here and there to FRIDAY. FRIDAY popped up a series of scans that were incomprehensible to Bucky; he had no idea what Richards could possibly have been looking for. Finally, Richards stepped back from the table and looked over at Steve. 

“According to the scans the AI ran for me,” he said, “Tony is, for all intents and purposes, a normal, healthy six-year-old child. There are no noticeable anomalies, nothing to tell me what could have possibly caused his transformation.”

“So, what do we do?” Steve asked. 

“I’d like to take some blood and tissue samples back to my lab,” Richards told him. “Without being able to study Tony in person, that’s the next best thing.”

Natasha went to Banner’s lab next door and brought back a syringe and several colored tubes. Richards collected the samples he needed with brisk efficiency, either ignoring or oblivious to the way Tony’s eyes went wide and he started to shake at the sight of the needle. Without a word, Bucky eased his way to the kid’s side and wrapped his hand around Tony’s, letting him squeeze his fingers when the needle slipped into his arm. Tony held on for a few seconds, but then pulled away and wrapped his free arm around his stomach, very pointedly avoiding contact with Bucky. Taking the hint, Bucky moved away from the table to give Tony his space. 

Finally Richards was done and wrapping a quick bandage around Tony’s arm. “I’ll take these samples back to the lab and run some tests.”

“When do you think you’ll know something?” Steve asked. 

“Oh, I don’t want to commit myself to a time line,” Richards replied. “I could find something in a matter of days, or it might take me months; there’s just no way to say.” As he headed for the door, he added, “I’ll call you when I know something.”

The door slid shut behind him with a quiet swish, leaving the lab in silence. A silence that Clint broke a few seconds later.

“Months?!” he exploded, shoving the nearest chair so that it clattered noisily to the ground. Tony visibly shuddered at the sound, but Clint didn’t seem to notice, so intent on his anger. “We gotta deal with this shit for months?”

“Clint,” Steve said, a warning tone in his voice, but the other man ignored him. 

“Bad enough that I don’t get to see my own kids,” he ranted, furiously, “but now I have to deal with Stark as an even bigger spoiled brat than he usually is?”

“No one’s happy about this situation,” Steve said, a placating tone in his voice, “but we’re stuck with Tony in this state, and we’re all going to have to deal with it the best that we can.”

While they were arguing, with the other Avengers rapidly taking sides, Bucky noticed movement out of the corner of his eye - Tony sliding carefully off the table. Keeping a wary eye on the adults arguing around him, Tony crept toward the doors, clearly intent on making another escape attempt. Looking up at the nearest camera, Bucky gave FRIDAY a quick nod. The doors obligingly slid open as Tony got closer, and Bucky watched him slip out into the empty hallway. 

“When they finish bickering like a bunch of kids,” he said, softly, “tell Steve I’m keeping an eye on Tony.”

“Of course, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY replied. 

Bucky followed Tony down the hallway, keeping a close eye on the kid who made a beeline for the nearest elevator. Bucky waited until he got on, doors sliding shut behind him, and then he jogged up the stairs to the main floor of the compound, where FRIDAY helpfully told him she was taking Tony. He was waiting for Tony when the elevator doors slid open, and he watched as surprise, and then dismay, flashed across the kid’s face. But, then Tony took a deep breath and stepped off the elevator, facing Bucky head-on. 

“I’d like to go home, now,” he said, far more politely than Bucky, himself, would have been in the same situation. 

“Tony?” he asked. “Do you know who I am?”

“No, sir,” Tony replied. “And my mommy told me to never talk to strangers, so I’d like to go home, please.”

“That’s not really possible, kid,” Bucky told him. “You’ve gotta stay here for a while, and we’re going to take care of you. My team and I are going to take care of you,” he clarified, figuring that if Tony didn’t know him, he probably didn’t know any of the other Avengers, either. 

Tony’s face darkened for a second as he glared at Bucky, but then his shoulders slumped and he nodded, quietly. He didn’t protest when Bucky put a hand on his shoulder and gently steered him back into the elevator and then down the hallway to one of the unused guest rooms. He would have put Tony in his own bedroom, but the kid looked freaked out enough as it was, and Bucky didn’t want to make things worse by potentially exposing him to things his older self had in there. At least not until they’d figured out what to tell him about everything that had happened. 

“Why don’t you stay in here for a bit?” he suggested.

Tony just nodded, again, crawling on the bed and squeezing into the corner like he was trying to make himself as small as possible. He had his knees drawn up to his chest inside the large shirt, and Bucky made a mental note to see about getting the kid some clothes. And toys, and whatever else kids needed these days. God, he hoped Richards found a way to reverse this whole mess, soon.

He had just turned to leave when he heard a hastily-muffled cough. Looking back at Tony, he caught the kid wiping his nose against his shirt, an action he quickly tried to hide. The sight reminded him of Steve as a kid, and how he used to try so hard to pretend he wasn’t sick. 

“You getting a cold, kid?” he asked, but Tony quickly shook his head, hiding his face from view. 

Bucky added some cough medicine to the mental list he was keeping; the last thing Tony needed was to get sick on top of everything else. 

“I’m gonna go talk to the rest of my team,” Bucky said, getting nothing from Tony but silence and a suspicious glare as he stepped back into the hallway and shut the door behind him. 

He’d half-expected the others to still be arguing when he got back to the lab, and he wasn’t disappointed. Also, no one seemed to have noticed Tony’s disappearance, yet, which was worrying, considering that they were all going to be responsible for taking care of Tony until he was back to normal. 

Bucky waited a few seconds, to see if they’d notice his presence, but they just kept arguing. He was about to get their attention when a painful shriek of electronic feedback ripped through the room. Everyone fell silent at the sound.

“My apologies,” FRIDAY said, sounding not the least bit sorry. “I deemed it the best way to bring your attention back to more pertinent matters.”

“I put the kid in a guest room,” Bucky spoke up, drawing the attention of the room to himself. “Figured we’d need to talk without him around.”

“It didn’t seem like Tony recognized any of us,” Steve said.

“He didn’t,” Bucky replied. “Kept asking when he could go home. I told him we were taking care of him for a bit, but I wasn’t sure what else to tell him.”

“Not the truth,” Nat said, shaking her head. “He’s just a little boy, right now, and who knows how he’s going to react to finding out what happened to him?”

“I disagree,” Vision spoke up, interrupting her next comment. “I have JARVIS’ memories, and he had known Mr. Stark for nearly thirty years. I believe he would be more than capable of handling such news.”

“As an adult, sure,” Nat argued. “Not a six-year-old kid.”

“We’re not telling him,” Steve said, effectively ending the discussion. “Natasha’s right; he’s just a kid, and he won’t be able to handle this. If he asks, we’ll just tell him that we’re friends of his parents and we’re taking care of him for a while. And hopefully Richards will come up with a solution before this all drags on too long.”

“There are some people we will have to inform of this development,” Vision said. “Namely, Ms. Potts and Colonel Rhodes. If either of them were to call the compound looking for Tony and could not find him-”

“Vision’s right,” Sam spoke up. “They’re Stark’s friends and we owe them an explanation.”

“Right,” Steve agreed. “FRIDAY, could you place a call to Ms. Potts, please?”

“Calling,” FRIDAY said, a holographic screen popping up in the middle of the lab. 

Pepper’s face came onto the screen a minute later. “Captain,” she greeted, sounding slightly distracted as she flipped through a stack of papers. “Rhodey and I were in a meeting with the Accords Council over Thanos, but FRIDAY said this is urgent.”

“It is,” Steve said, and he filled her in on everything that had happened with Tony. Pepper listened in silence, the calm expression on her face never wavering. 

“Thank you for keeping me informed, Captain,” Pepper said, when Steve finished. “Do you need myself or Rhodey to come back up to take care of him?”

“No,” Steve told her, “I think we have it under control. Dr. Richards of the Fantastic Four is working to reverse Tony’s transformation, and he’ll hopefully have a solution, soon.”

“Then, Rhodey and I will check in again after we get another break in these meetings,” Pepper said. Someone off-screen called out to her, and she frowned, apologetically. “I’m sorry, I have to go. But, one last thing, Captain,” Pepper said, before Steve could end the call. She smiled, but her eyes stayed hard and steady as she stared Steve down through the screen. “If anything, even a scratch, happens to Tony while he’s under your care, I’m going to make you wish they’d never dug you out of the ice. Do I make myself clear?”

Steve swallowed, taking an involuntary step away from the screen. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, quietly. “I promise you, I will make sure Tony is safe.”

Bucky had first met Pepper on the battlefield against Thanos’ forces, Pepper wearing a suit of armor and shooting fire from her hands. She’d been terrifying then, and she was no less so now, wearing a different kind of suit and facing down the Avengers. Bucky could easily see why Tony was so in love with her. 

After Pepper had clicked off, Sam turned to the rest of the team. “So, who’s taking the first shift babysitting the kid?”


	4. Chapter 4

It had been three days since the accident, and there were times when Bucky almost forgot what had happened to Tony. Tony spent most of his time in various hiding places around the compound, only coming out for meals - just like he had as an adult. He avoided talking to anyone unless absolutely necessary, and when he did speak, he was quiet, polite, and kept his words short before disappearing again. Bucky could count on one hand the times he’d seen him for longer than five seconds; the kid seemed almost like a ghost. 

The hell of it was, the other Avengers seemed to prefer it that way. Clint had made his opinion of the whole situation well-known on the first day, and since then had spoken to Tony maybe three times. Steve had never been the most comfortable around kids, and being in a new century hadn’t seemed to improve that very much; Wanda was equally uncomfortable, and their interactions with Tony tended to end with at least one person getting upset. Vision was spending all of his time over at the Baxter Building, assisting Richards with his tests. Sam and Nat seemed to have the best time being around Tony, what little time they got, anyway, and between the two of them got Tony fed and clothed each day before he disappeared for hours on end. 

Bucky, for his part, really had no clue what he was doing. He had vague memories of spending time with his older sister’s kids, once upon a time, but those kids hadn’t spent all their free time avoiding even being in the same room with him. His own interactions with Tony were mostly limited to that first night, and even if he wanted to spend more time with the kid, he frankly didn’t have the first idea of where to start.

So, of course, the team had unanimously voted him babysitter when they’d left a few hours ago to deal with an attack by a HYDRA cell, somewhere in the middle of New Jersey.

Bucky had left Tony to his own devices for a while. It was what seemed to make the kid the happiest, and Bucky had FRIDAY to keep a close eye on Tony and tell him if anything was wrong. But then FRIDAY had reminded him about food, and there was no one else around to make Tony lunch, so now Bucky found himself in the kitchen, trying to figure out exactly what would appeal to a six-year-old. 

“It’s not going to work.”

Bucky bit back a startled curse as he turned around to see Tony standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching him with a solemn expression on his face. He had no idea how the kid had managed to sneak up on him, but apparently seventy years of Soviet bioengineering was no match for a barefoot six-year-old. 

“What’s not going to work?” Bucky asked, as he turned his attention back to the sandwich he’d been making for Tony. Peanut butter and jelly, with the crusts cut off per FRIDAY’s instructions, and sliced into four small triangles-

“My daddy’s not going to pay you to get me back,” Tony said, and this time Bucky did curse as he neatly sliced the knife across the top of his finger. 

Dropping the knife, he grabbed a nearby towel to staunch the flow of blood, but he wasn’t fast enough to keep from dripping bright red droplets on the sandwich. Bucky threw the ruined sandwich away in the garbage and put the plate in the sink. One sandwich disaster was more than enough for one day; he’d order pizza after he figured out just what the hell Tony was talking about. 

“What do you mean?” he demanded, turning to look at Tony. “What are you talking about, paying to get you back?”

“That’s what he told the last people who took me,” Tony told him, not moving out of the doorway. “They wanted lots’a money, and he said he wasn’t going to pay to get me back. And he won’t pay you, either. So you should just take me home.”

Bucky closed his eyes as he tried to wrap his mind around everything that had just come out of Tony’s mouth. The kid hadn’t been quiet and almost-scarily obedient for the last three days because he was being good, he’d thought that he’d been - that the Avengers had - 

“We didn’t kidnap you, kid,” Bucky finally managed to force out. “No one wants any money for you.”

“So let me go home,” Tony said, with the inescapable stubbornness of a six-year-old. 

“You-you can’t-” Bucky started, not sure how to explain things so that Tony would understand. “Tony, this is your home. You live here, now.”

Tony was silent for several long moments, clearly working through something in his mind. When it looked like he wasn’t getting a response out of the kid for the foreseeable future, Bucky asked FRIDAY to order pizza from Tony’s favorite place down the street. The pizza arrived about twenty minutes later, twenty minutes that Tony spent sitting quietly at a table in the kitchen with a pensive look on his face. Watching him out of the corner of his eye, Bucky pulled two clean plates down from the cabinet and dropped hot pieces of sausage-and-pepperoni pizza onto them, grabbing some napkins and joining Tony at the table. 

“Lunch,” Bucky prompted, when Tony continued to just sit there, and the kid obediently picked up the slice of pizza and took a bite. 

“Was it because I was bad?” he asked, out of the blue, several bites later. 

“Was what because you were bad?” Bucky asked, cautiously, almost afraid to hear the answer. 

“Daddy told me if I was bad, he’d send me to military school and they’d whip me into shape,” Tony told him, matter-of-factly. “Is this military school, and am I here because I was bad?”

As he contemplated an answer to this newest bombshell, Bucky decided that he’d never hated anyone as much as he hated Howard Stark in that moment. 

He took the rest of lunch to try and figure out an answer, Tony watching him curiously the entire time. Bucky was at a loss; Steve had decided that they weren’t going to tell Tony the truth because he was too young to handle it, but Bucky honestly couldn’t figure out what to tell the kid that didn’t make it sound like his parents had abandoned him to a bunch of strangers. 

Finally, as he was loading the dishwasher and saw Tony wiping down the table without even being asked, he decided the truth was his only option. The kid had shown himself to be remarkably mature for his age, and he’d grown up on tales of Captain America and the serum that made him a super soldier; maybe learning about his accident wouldn’t be so frightening after all. 

“Let’s talk,” Bucky told Tony, as he steered the kid into the living room. “You deserve to know what’s really going on.”

Tony climbed on the couch, his feet dangling off the edge as he sat all the way back against the cushions. Folding his hands on his lap, he fixed Bucky with an unblinking stare. Bucky took a minute to gather his thoughts, then he took another when he still couldn’t figure out how to start. 

Finally, Tony had had enough. “Why won’t you let me go home?” he demanded, impatiently, the first sign of being a regular child that he’d shown in three days. 

Bucky was still trying to figure out where to begin when he saw the newspaper scattered across the coffee table. Grabbing the front page, he held it out to Tony. 

“This is today’s newspaper,” Bucky said, as Tony took the paper from him. “It’s May, two-thousand eighteen.”

Tony’s eyes were wide as he read the date on the paper, then he turned that same, shocked gaze on Bucky. “This is a trick,” he said, accusingly. 

“No trick,” Bucky replied. “That thing on the wall, there?” he said, pointing. “That’s a tv. And this is a phone,” he added, pulling his Stark phone out of his pocket. “It makes calls, it plays videos, it accesses the internet-” 

Tony stared silently at the phone, then up at the big tv, then back to the phone. He poked at it carefully like he was afraid it might explode, and then in a small voice, “I’m in the future?”

“Kind of,” Bucky told him. “You, uh, you had an accident. And it turned you from the age you’re supposed to be into the age you are now.”

“I’m supposed to be older?” Tony asked. “An adult like you?”

“Right,” Bucky confirmed. Taking his phone back from Tony, he pulled up the internet and looked for photos of Tony, pulling up the best one. “This is you,” he said, and Tony stared at the picture. 

“Tony Stark hosts charity gala for children’s hospital,” he read. “I do charity work? Like my mommy?”

Bucky nodded. “I think you even have a charity named after her,” he added, remembering something about a Stark Foundation he’d read about in the news. He was hoping the information would make Tony smile; instead Tony was frowning at the phone in his hand. 

“But where are my mommy and daddy?” he asked - the one question Bucky had desperately been hoping to avoid.

Bucky couldn’t even begin to know how to tell him about Howard and Maria. The memory of Siberia, of the utterly shattered look on Tony’s face when he’d seen that video, still haunted him; he couldn’t imagine seeing that look from the little boy sitting beside him. But he couldn’t not tell him what had happened to his parents.

“They-” Bucky had to stop and clear his throat; this was a lot harder than he would have thought. “Tony, your parents, they’re gone. I’m sorry.”

Tony didn’t scream, or cry, or lash out in any of the ways Bucky had prepared himself for. He didn’t react at all; he just sat there, motionless, as he digested the news. 

“Tony?” Bucky prompted, carefully, when the silence started to stretch on uncomfortably. 

“May I be excused?” Tony asked, and Bucky blinked in surprise. 

“Tony, do you want to talk about-”

“I just wanna be alone!” Tony snapped, interrupting him, and then he cringed when he realized that he’d been shouting. “’M sorry. May I please be excused?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky said, and Tony bolted from the room, disappearing down the hallway in a heartbeat. “FRIDAY,” Bucky said, quietly, “keep an eye on him?”

“Always,” FRIDAY promised.


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky really should have expected another escape attempt. After all, the kid had already tried twice, and it was doubtful that he’d just given up now that he knew the truth about what had happened to him. But it still scared the shit out of him when FRIDAY reported that Tony was no longer in the compound. 

“What do you mean he’s not in the compound?” Bucky demanded, staring up at the camera in horror. 

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY apologized. “Boss was still in the process of restoring my full functionality throughout the compound when he was turned into a child. I’m afraid there are parts of the compound that I don’t have full visual and auditory access to.”

“He’s outside,” Bucky groaned, as he headed for the front door. “Damn it.”

“Shall I contact the local police department?” FRIDAY asked, and Bucky froze in the foyer. 

“No, not yet,” he told her. “We can’t exactly tell the cops that a six-year-old version of Tony Stark is lost in New York. Besides, we’re out in the middle of nowhere; how far could he have possibly gotten?”

Just like he’d been hoping for, when he stepped outside the compound, he could see a tiny figure trudging determinedly down the road. Breaking into a run, Bucky caught up with Tony in a few seconds, watching the kid startle as his shadow blocked out the sunlight. With a sigh, Tony stopped and turned to face Bucky, staring up at him. 

“Where you going?” Bucky asked. 

“I want to see my mommy and daddy,” Tony told him. 

“Kid, I told you-” Bucky started, but Tony shook his head. 

“I remember what you told me,” he said, scornfully. “I’m not stupid.” Then his face crumpled as he whispered, “I just wanna see where they’re buried.”

“Oh, Tony,” Bucky said, as he watched tears roll down the boy’s face. 

Kneeling down, he held his arms out, waiting. Tony resisted for a second before lunging at Bucky and burying his face in the front of his shirt. Hot tears soaked the material as Tony cried, his entire body shaking with the force of his sobs. Bucky rubbed his back while he cried, and when he heard the tell-tale sniffles indicating the tears were stopping, he scooped Tony up in his arms and started back toward the compound. Tony was silent as they went back inside the building, but Bucky could feel him perk up when they headed into the garage. 

“What’re we doing in here?” he asked. 

“I’m taking you to see your parents,” Bucky told him, as he grabbed a keyring off the pegboard on the back wall. 

When they’d first moved in, Tony had shown them the variety of vehicles in the garage, pointing out which ones were marked for use by the entire team. Bucky hadn’t done a whole lot of driving over the past seventy years, but it was a skill he’d picked up easily enough again after escaping HYDRA. 

Taking Tony over to the car he’d chosen, he set him down as he unlocked the door, but when he opened the back door for Tony, the kid just stared up at him. 

“I think I’m supposed to use a car seat even in the future,” he said, solemnly, and Bucky had to fight back a grin. Tony as a kid was just as much a little shit as he was as an adult. 

“I’ll drive carefully,” he promised. “We don’t usually have kids running around the compound, so we’re kind of short on car seats, right now.”

Tony looked like he wanted to protest the glaring oversight in safety, which Bucky found hilarious, considering all the dangerous stunts Tony had pulled over the years, but then he sighed and climbed into the backseat of the car, buckling himself in. Getting into the driver’s seat, Bucky started the car and drove out of the garage. A quick search on his phone pulled up the address of the cemetery that Howard and Maria were buried at, and they made the drive in silence. 

It took about an hour to reach the cemetery, and Tony trailed Bucky out of the car after they parked, still quiet. Bucky had to stop at the administration office to ask about the actual location of the graves, and then they made their way to the spot indicated on a map. From what he remembered of Howard, Bucky would have expected something rather ostentatious, so the large but simple headstone, decorated only with their names, was a bit of a surprise. But, when he thought about it, he realized that Tony had been in charge of planning his parents’ funerals, and the simplicity was probably his doing. 

A quiet whimper stopped Bucky before he got to the graves, and he turned to see Tony standing frozen, staring at the headstone with wide eyes. “Something wrong, kid?” he asked. 

“They’re really gone, aren’t they?” Tony asked, quietly. “The whole time we were driving, I was hoping it was a bad dream, but they’re gone.”

“Yeah,” Bucky told him. “I’m sorry, Tony. I wish-” His voice caught on the words, and he could feel unexpected tears stinging his eyes. “I wish I could bring ‘em back for you.”

Tony hugged Bucky, taking him by surprise. “Thanks, Mr. Barnes,” he said, his words muffled in Bucky’s shoulder. 

“Call me Bucky,” Bucky told him. “Hearing Mr. Barnes makes me feel old.” Tony blinked up at him, his face the absolute picture of innocence. When he opened his mouth, Bucky scowled. “Before you say what I know you’re about to say,” he informed Tony, “I’d just like to point out that you’re actually supposed to be older than I am.”

“Am not,” Tony protested, automatically.

“Are too,” Bucky retorted. “Hate to break it to you, kid, but you’re over fifty.”

Tony giggled, the first happy sound Bucky had heard from him since - well, honestly, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d ever heard Tony sound happy. The expression on his face was bright and open, a complete contrast from the wary, suspicious look he’d been wearing for the last several days. It hurt Bucky more than he’d expected, realizing that he’d played a part in putting that look on Tony’s face, and he resolved to change how he treated him. How everyone treated him. 

“Do you want to go over to your parents’ graves?” he asked, and Tony nodded after a long moment. 

He slipped his hand into Bucky’s, squeezing hard as they walked forward. Bucky could feel him trembling as they stopped in front of the headstone. 

But Tony’s voice was steady when he whispered, “Hi, Mommy. Hi, Daddy. I miss you. I wish you were here.” He sniffled back tears as he looked at the headstone for another minute, and then he tugged his hand out of Bucky’s and wandered a little ways away. 

Keeping an eye on Tony to make sure he didn’t get lost, Bucky reached out and brushed his fingertips across the cool stone. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I - I can’t change what happened, but I can try to make up for it, now. I can take care of your son for you.”

Turning away from the headstone, Bucky went over to where Tony was kicking a rock idly across the grass. “Hey, kid,” he said, dropping a hand onto Tony’s shoulder. “What do you say we get out of here and get some ice cream?”


	6. Chapter 6

Tony, sitting at a sidewalk table outside the ice cream shop, stared wide-eyed at Bucky as he came over to the table. Or, more accurately, he was staring at the bowls overflowing with ice cream that Bucky was carrying. His mouth opened as Bucky placed one of the bowls in front of him, spoon sticking out of the side, but no sound came out. Bucky bit back a grin at the absolutely dumbfounded expression Tony turned on him. 

“Eat up,” Bucky suggested. 

Tony didn’t need any more urging as he dug eagerly into the ice cream. Bucky watched him eat, a blissful expression on his face, before starting in on his own ice cream. After a few seconds, he realized that Tony kept sneaking glances at his gloved left hand. 

“It’s a prosthetic,” he explained, anticipating Tony’s question as he pulled off the glove. “I lost my arm in an accident.”

“Can I-” Tony started, and Bucky stretched his hand across the table so that Tony could touch his metal hand. “That’s so cool!” he breathed. “How do you make it move? Can it transmit pressure? What about heat? Can you-”

“Take a breath,” Bucky told him, laughing. “I think there are schematics back at the compound, if you want to look at them. You actually helped me with my arm, last week.”

“Awesome,” Tony said, a reverent tone in his voice. His curiosity over Bucky’s arm clearly wasn’t satisfied, but at Bucky’s urging he went back to his ice cream. At least for a few minutes. “So, I’m really in the future,” he started. 

“In a manner of speaking,” Bucky replied. 

“Your name is Bucky Barnes, and the big blond guy is called Steve Rogers,” Tony went on, and Bucky was starting to get an idea of what he was getting at. 

“Yes, he really is Captain America,” he said, getting another stunned look from Tony. “It’s a long story, but basically Steve was stuck somewhere for a long time until SHIELD found him a few years ago.”

Tony was quiet as he mulled over this latest revelation, frowning slightly as he ate his ice cream. “Am I a bad person when I’m older?” he asked, softly. 

“Absolutely not,” Bucky said, automatically, even as he tried to figure out how Tony could have arrived at that question. “Why would you think that?”

“My daddy says that Captain America hates bad people,” Tony explained, “and he doesn’t like me, so I must be a bad person.”

“You are not a bad person,” Bucky said. “Steve is awkward around kids, and he can be an idiot, sometimes. But that’s on him, not you.” When Tony didn’t look convinced, Bucky added, “Come on, would a Howling Commando lie to you?”

“Captain America lied in order to get into the Army,” Tony told him.

“And we just established that Steve does stupid things,” Bucky reminded him. “The rest of the Howlies? Angels, all of us.”

“Not in the stories Aunt Peggy tells me,” Tony said, and Bucky laughed. 

“You got me there, kid,” he conceded. Leaning back in his chair, Bucky took the opportunity to people-watch while Tony finished his ice cream. It didn’t matter how long he spent as an active Avenger, he didn’t think he’d ever get out of the habit of looking over his shoulder. He’d spent too long running from people who wanted to hurt him.

And speaking of being hunted…

There was a man sitting at a table across the street, and he’d been staring at them for the last several minutes. It could have been perfectly innocent; he could have simply been curious about the people around him. He could have even been distracted by the sun glinting off Bucky’s hand, since he hadn’t bothered to put his glove back on yet. But in Bucky’s experience, people who displayed too much curiosity in him were generally up to no good. And the last thing he wanted was to put Tony in the cross hairs of anyone who might want to hurt him. 

“You finished with your ice cream?” he asked, and when Tony nodded, he stood up and pulled the keys out of his pocket. “Let’s get home, then. Beat the traffic.”

Bucky could feel the man’s eyes on him as they walked down the sidewalk to where he’d parked the car. Holding the door open for Tony to climb into the backseat, Bucky looked back and caught the man’s eye for a brief moment before the man hastily broke his gaze, looking instead at the newspaper spread out on his table. 

Bucky glared at the man’s back for another moment before getting in the car. It was possible there was nothing suspicious about the man, and if there was, he knew the man’s face now, and he’d take care of anything that happened.  


* * *

Back at the compound, Bucky was surprised to see the building empty. “The team’s not back, yet?” he asked.

“No, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY answered. “Captain Rogers has called to update that they have been detained by complications, and will likely not return until late.”

“Do they need help?” Bucky asked. He couldn’t leave Tony, but the Fantastic Four were still in the city, and they could be there in under an hour if needed. 

“Vision has joined them, and Captain Rogers reports that the situation is complicated but under control,” FRIDAY told him. “Also, Colonel Rhodes called to speak to Tony. He said that he would be calling back.”

Bucky was happier with that bit of news. True to Pepper’s word, she and Rhodes had called over the last several days to check up on Tony; he hadn’t spoken to them before because he’d been avoiding the team, but now that that misunderstanding had been cleared up, Bucky hoped he could convince Tony to talk to his best friend. 

“Maybe I’ll call him first,” he commented, as he went into the living room where Tony was curled up on the couch. “Hey, kid,” he said, getting Tony’s attention, “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“What kind of surprise?” Tony asked, and Bucky pulled his cell phone out, scrolling through the contacts until he got to Rhodes’ number, which FRIDAY had put in after Tony’s accident. 

“Someone who’s been wanting to talk to you,” Bucky told him, as the phone rang. “He’s your best friend, when you’re older. His name is James Rhodes.”

Just then Rhodes picked up the call, barely-concealed panic on his face as video came on. “Barnes, what’s wrong?” he demanded. “Is it Tones?”

“I’m fine,” Tony spoke up before Bucky could, and Rhodes’ shoulders slumped with relief. “Hi, Mr. Rhodes.”

“Mr. Rhodes?” Rhodes chuckled. “Kid, you’ve called me Rhodey ever since we were teenagers.”

“Okay, Rhodey,” Tony said, hesitantly. “Um. Bucky said you’re my best friend? Are we really?”

Something sad flashed across Rhodes’ face for a second, before being replaced by a blinding smile. “You,” Rhodes said, “are my favorite person in the whole world. And I’m in the Air Force, so I know a lot of people.”

Tony laughed, the sound more and more wonderful to Bucky every time he heard it. “Are you in New York?” Tony asked. “Can you come over?”

“Not yet,” Rhodes said, regretfully. “I’m in DC for work, right now. But hopefully we’ll be done, soon, and then I can come home.”

“You live here?” Tony asked, sounding delighted at the prospect. 

“Right down the hall from you,” Rhodes told him. “In fact, sometimes you sleep in my room when you work late nights and you don’t want to walk all the way back to yours.”

They talked for a few more minutes before Tony started yawning, the long, emotionally-draining day finally catching up to him. Bucky eased him down onto the couch when he started to pitch forward, covering him with the blanket draped over the back. Then he took his phone into the kitchen to keep from waking Tony up. 

“Three days of Tony ducking our calls,” Rhodes said, bluntly, “and now he’s all smiles, and he seems like he knows what’s going on, when Rogers was adamant about not telling him. What the hell is going on?”

“He thought that we’d kidnapped him,” Bucky said, not seeing any other way of phrasing it. “He came up to me this morning and told me that his father had no intention of paying any ransom for him.”

Rhodes huffed out a breath. “Yeah, that sounds like Howard,” he said, sourly. 

“So, I told him the truth,” Bucky went on. “I couldn’t let him keep thinking that he was being held hostage. Although he was awfully matter-of-fact about it,” he added, thinking back to earlier that day. “He mentioned something about other kidnappers?”

He was hoping that Rhodes would deny it, but he wasn’t that lucky. “Tony was the only child of a rich man with a lot of enemies,” Rhodes said, instead. “It made him a target. He got used to getting himself out of bad situations.”

“No one ever came to rescue him?” Bucky demanded, horrified. 

“Oh, the cops were called, every time,” Rhodes replied. “It’s just, by the time Tony was a teenager, he was rescuing himself before the cops ever even got there.”

“…I really want to punch Howard Stark in the face,” Bucky said, getting a wry chuckle from Rhodes.

“You’re gonna have to stand in line for that pleasure,” he said. Glancing down at his watch, he added, “Sorry, but I’ve got to run. Tell Tones that Pepper and I’ll call him again as soon as we can.”

“I will,” Bucky promised, and the screen went dark as Rhodes hung up the call. 

Going back into the living room, Bucky perched on the arm of the couch, watching Tony sleep. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before FRIDAY told him that the other Avengers had just arrived at the compound, but he stood and went to meet them at the landing pad. 

“Anyone hurt?” he asked, as they stepped off the Quinjet.

“Everyone’s fine,” Steve reassured him. “You’re not going to believe what happened in New Jersey-”

“It’ll keep,” Bucky interrupted him. “We need to talk about Tony.”


	7. Chapter 7

“This is embarrassing,” Bucky told Steve, who flipped him off without looking. “Seriously,” Bucky went on, as he looked at the game board over Steve’s shoulder, “I am genuinely embarrassed for you, Steve. You’re losing a game of Risk; you’ve led troops into combat and you’re losing a game of Risk.”

“That’s different,” Steve grumbled, glaring down at the board. “That’s - this is-”

“You’re getting your ass handed to you by a six-year-old,” Bucky informed him. “That’s embarrassing, Steve.”

Across the board, Tony smiled smugly from behind his pile of tokens and cards. “It’s your move,” he reminded Steve, cheerfully. 

Goaded into action, Steve grabbed the dice and rolled, groaning in dismay when he came up with a low roll, yet again. Tony’s smile got bigger as he contemplated his next move. 

“Okay, but I’m playing against the entire team, here,” Steve protested, gesturing to the group gathered behind Tony. “How is that fair?”

“A good general always has advisers,” Clint told him, from his perch on the end of the couch. “Hey, kid, go after France, next. That’s his weak point.”

“It’s not Tony’s fault that you didn’t make alliances with any of us like he did,” Natasha added, leaning over to whisper something in Tony’s ear. Bucky cackled with laughter as Tony’s smile got even bigger and he stared Steve down with an intensity that would have had anyone else sweating. 

The past week had been almost idyllic, in comparison to their first few days. After Bucky had talked to the team about their behavior toward Tony, they’d all made a conscious effort to be better about how they acted around him. In response, Tony was more relaxed around the others, smiling more and spending time with the team.

Rhodes and Pepper had found a couple hours between Accord Council meetings to fly up and see Tony. He’d been awestruck at the sight of two brilliantly-gleaming armors flying in to the landing pad; even more so when Rhodes had told him that he’d designed and built both armors. They’d taken Tony flying around the city before they’d had to head back to DC, and they called almost every night to talk to him. 

All in all, things were going pretty damn well. Which was why Bucky was just waiting for something to come along and screw everything up. 

“Captain Rogers,” FRIDAY said, “Dr. Richards is calling for you.”

Yeah, that would do certainly screw things up. 

“Put him through,” Steve said, and Richards’ face swam into view as the call was projected onto the tv screen. “Dr. Richards, how are you?”

“I think I have a solution to Tony’s problem,” Richards said, by way of greeting. “Can you bring him to the Baxter Building for some tests?”

“Yeah, right away,” Steve said, looking at Tony with a startled look on his face. “That’s great news, Dr. Richards. Thank you. We’ll be right over.”

“Well, Stark,” Clint said, as Steve ended the call, “looks like we’re about to get you back to normal.”

“It’s about time, too,” Sam added. “I’m getting a little tired of being the only air support for the team.”

The rest of the team headed eagerly for the garage, but Bucky hung back when he saw Tony lingering over the board game, fiddling with one of the tokens. Bucky dropped onto the couch beside him, getting a brief glance before Tony turned his attention back to the game. 

“Something wrong?” Bucky prompted, when it became clear that Tony wasn’t going to say anything.

“What if I can’t do it?” he whispered. “What if Dr. Richards’ tests fail, and I can’t turn back?”

“Well,” Bucky said, trying to choose his words carefully, “we’ll still take care of you, Tony, no matter what. We’re not just going to dump you out on the street.”

Rather than looking reassured, Tony just looked more upset. “But you heard Sam,” he insisted. “They need Iron Man. And I’m no use if I can’t be Iron Man.”

“Maybe they need Iron Man,” Bucky said, “but I don’t.” Tony turned a stunned look on him, his face starting to crumple, and Bucky wrapped an arm around his shoulders in a hug. “I don’t need Iron Man,” he went on, “but I do need Tony Stark.”

“What do you mean?” Tony asked, confused. 

“Iron Man’s great in battle,” Bucky told him, “But Tony’s invaluable. Tony’s the guy who fixes my arm when it breaks, and tells me all about Pepper’s shoe collection. He makes cool toys for Rhodey and Pepper, and he’s their best friend. He gets me out of the compound to go eat a ton of ice cream, and I’m hoping he’ll go with me to Coney Island, to ride the Cyclone until we puke.”

Tony finally cracked a smile, relaxing against Bucky’s side. “Can we get cotton candy even if I’m big, again?” he asked, voice muffled by Bucky’s shirt. 

“The bigger you are, the more cotton candy you can eat,” Bucky told him. Standing, he held a hand out to Tony. “You ready to go see Richards?”

* * *

“You want me to do _what_?”

Bucky snorted out a laugh at the offended tone in Tony’s voice as he glared at Richards. Tony had complied with everything Richards had asked of him since they’d arrived at the Baxter Building: giving him a tissue sample, blood sample, submitting to countless measurements. But apparently Tony had just hit his limit. 

“You just said that hitting me with the big laser is what turned me into a kid in the first place,” Tony argued, crossing his arms in a way that Bucky suspected was mimicking Howard at his finest. “And now you want to do it again?”

“To reverse the effects of the first laser, yes,” Richards answered, cheerfully. “It won’t hurt. Probably.”

If Richards meant that to be reassuring, he failed. Miserably. Tony looked ready to bolt away from the spot Richards had placed him in the center of the lab. But he swallowed hard and stayed put, clasping his trembling hands behind his back to hide them from sight. Bucky really wanted to scoop Tony up and punch Richards in the face, but if Tony could stay put, so could he. 

“I’m ready,” Tony said. 

Richards turned on the device he’d built, the machine emitting a low hum as it powered up. A light came on in the center, glowing brighter and brighter until Richards pressed a series of buttons. The humming sound got louder for a second, and then a beam of light shot out of the device and hit Tony in the chest, bright enough to obscure him from view. Bucky was starting to have a bad flashback to when Tony got changed in the first place. But this time when it faded, Tony was standing there, completely unchanged. 

“It didn’t work,” he pointed out. 

“I don’t understand,” Richards muttered, mostly to himself, as he poked at the device. “There’s no reason for that to have failed. If I just make a few more tweaks-”

“You make your tweaks,” Bucky interrupted him, “and then call us when you’re ready. Meanwhile, we’ve got a date with a roller coaster. C’mon, Tony.”

Tony grinned, happily, grabbing Bucky’s hand and tugging him toward the door. “We’ll see you later, Dr. Richards!”

The rest of the team caught up to them out on the sidewalk outside the building. Steve was on his phone, and when he hung up, he was frowning. “That was Sharon,” he said. “SHIELD just got a tip regarding HYDRA operations down in Tallahassee.”

“Florida?” Bucky asked. When Steve nodded, he shook his head. “That doesn’t sound right; I don’t remember HYDRA having anything in Florida.”

“Sharon says that this is good intel,” Steve told him. “She’s already got the go-ahead from the Accords Council and she wants us in the air in thirty minutes. We’ve got to get back to the compound.” Seeing the anxious look on Tony’s face, he hastened to add, “I’m sure it’s nothing. But we need to check it out, just in case.”

Tony nodded, but he didn’t look convinced. “Please be careful,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“We’re the Avengers,” Sam told him. “We’re gonna be just fine.”

Tony still didn’t look convinced, holding tightly to Bucky’s hand as they watched the team get back in the SUV and drive away. When the vehicle was out of sight, he looked up at Bucky. “Maybe if we go back upstairs, Dr. Richards can get his machine working right, and then I can be an adult and we can go with them.”

“I know you’re scared,” Bucky said, crouching to look Tony in the eye. “I am, too. I want the team to be safe. But I also want you to be safe, and if we rush Richards, there’s a chance he could make a mistake and you could get hurt. I think we should let him take his time, and in the meantime, I’ll call Rhodey and see if he and Pepper can meet the team in Florida. With War Machine and Rescue, HYDRA doesn’t stand a chance, right?”

“Right,” Tony agreed, sighing. “I just wish we were going with them, too.”

“Me too, kid,” Bucky told him. Straightening up, he added, “So, do you still want to go to Coney Island?” Off Tony’s surprised look, he explained, “it’s not going to do us much good to sit around the compound and brood. We might as well do something to keep us busy.”

“I guess,” Tony said. “But how are we going to get there? Steve took the car.”

Bucky grinned down at Tony. “You ever been on the subway?” he asked. When Tony shook his head, he added, “Oh, you’re in for a treat.”

* * *

Coney Island was just as busy as Bucky remembered from when he was a kid. There were hundreds of people on the beach, and Bucky automatically pulled Tony closer to him. He didn’t want to lose Tony in this crowd; there was a chance he’d never find him, again. 

“So,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough so that Tony could hear him, “I believe I promised you a ride on the Cyclone?”

“No, you said enough rides to make me puke,” Tony reminded him. “Daddy says I’ve got a strong stomach, so it’ll probably take more than one ride.”

Bucky burst out laughing. “All right,” he conceded. “We’ll go on the Cyclone more than once.”

He could see the roller coaster in the distance, and they set off across the boardwalk. Halfway there it got crowded enough that Bucky swung Tony up on his shoulders, to keep him from getting carried away by all the people. Once they reached the roller coaster, there was a line, but as they joined the end, Bucky noticed a sign next to the ropes. 

“Height restriction?” he read out loud. “They didn’t have this the last time I was here.”

“I can’t ride if I’m too short,” Tony explained, and Bucky lifted him off his shoulders so that he could stand against the sign. Tony sighed when he realized that the line was several inches above his head. “Guess I’m too short.”

“I’m sorry, kid,” Bucky told him. “There were no height restrictions the last time I rode this thing. Of course, that was a while ago, so-”

“It’s okay,” Tony said. “There’s other fun stuff we can do, right?”

“Tons,” Bucky said. 

As they wandered around the boardwalk, they found some rides that Tony was tall enough for, then a break for cotton candy, then a few more rides. Then, Tony saw the carnival games and his eyes lit up. 

“You want to try to win a prize?” Bucky asked, and Tony nodded so hard he was practically vibrating in place. 

He was surprisingly good at Whack-a-Mole, going after the puppets with a ferocity Bucky didn’t know he’d possessed. But after the hawker handed him his prize, Tony promptly turned around and handed it to the kid behind him, who hadn’t won. “I don’t need the prize,” he explained. “I just like playing the game. Is that okay?” he asked, belatedly, like he thought Bucky might be upset with him.

“You’re the same way as an adult, too,” Bucky told him. “You give people things just to make them happy. It’s one of the things I like best about you.”

They played a few more games the same way, Tony working to win a prize and then promptly giving it to someone else. But then Bucky saw the water gun game, and the prizes it was offering, and he nudged Tony. “Hey, why don’t you let me win you something to take home with you?”

“Bucky Bear!” Tony exclaimed, seeing row after row of the stuffed bears hanging from the top of the tent. “I always wanted a Bucky Bear, but daddy says I’m too old, and-” He broke off, suddenly, looking up at Bucky. “It’s not weird if I get a Bucky Bear, is it?” he asked. 

“Only if you don’t think it’s weird for me to get a stuffed Iron Man doll,” Bucky told him, pointing to the prize that had originally drawn his attention, the red and yellow dolls hanging below the Bucky Bears. 

He paid for a ticket to the game, sitting on the stool behind one of the plastic water guns. With Tony bouncing beside him, Bucky lined up at the target and carefully pulled the trigger. A stream of water shot out of the gun, hitting the first of the targets dead center. Bucky took down target after target with methodical precision, and when the last one fell, Tony let out an excited cheer. 

“One large prize, or two mediums?” the hawker asked. 

“One Bucky Bear and one Iron Man,” Bucky replied, handing Tony the bear after it was passed to him. The Iron Man plush he tucked under his arm. “So, Tony, what do you want to do, next?”

A sudden, shrill scream cut off any reply Tony might have made, and Bucky instinctively looked around for the danger. Seeing a young man in the process of proposing to his very excited fiancee, Bucky forced himself to calm down. There was nothing dangerous here; he could let himself relax for one afternoon. 

“So, Tony,” he repeated, “what should we do, now?” No answer, and Bucky looked around for the kid. “Tony? Tony, where are you?”

He couldn’t see Tony anywhere. He pushed through the crowd, hoping desperately that Tony had just wandered a few feet away, but there was nothing. No familiar head of dark hair, no brightly-colored shirt, no - spotting something on the ground, Bucky shoved a few people aside and reached down to grab the Bucky Bear lying abandoned on the ground. 

_“Tony!”_


	8. Chapter 8

As he huddled in the corner of the van he’d been stuffed into, Tony decided he was really tired of getting kidnapped. 

He’d been at the park, having fun with Bucky, when someone had grabbed him and shoved a damp cloth over his face. He hadn’t even had time to yell for Bucky when everything had gone black. And when he’d woken up, his hands and feet were tied and he was lying in the corner of the van, feeling every bump in the road as they drove. 

One of the men - Tony was calling him Mohawk because of his hair - who’d taken him was sitting across from him with a gun in his lap. He hadn’t said a word since Tony had woken up, just pointed the gun at him every time he tried to move. Tony had gotten the message quickly enough and stayed put; he didn’t want to give the man any reason to use the gun on him. 

Tony couldn’t even figure out why he’d been grabbed from the park. The last time someone had taken him, it was because they wanted money from his parents. But his parents were gone, now, and he was supposed to be an adult, which meant that no one knew who he was. As far as anyone was concerned, he was just some nameless kid. So why would anyone want to kidnap him?

Not that Tony was about to ask the people who’d taken him, with their angry faces and their guns. Like he’d told Bucky, he wasn’t stupid. 

Thinking about Bucky cheered him up a bit. Bucky was a Howling Commando - he was the best Howling Commando. And by now he had to have noticed Tony was missing, which meant that he was coming after him. And he was going to rescue Tony, and the bad guys were going to be so sorry-

“When Bucky finds me,” Tony told his kidnapper, unable to stay silent any longer, “he’s going to kick your butt.”

Mohawk laughed, a cold, hard sound. “We have plans for your precious Bucky,” he said. 

“Shut up,” the driver snapped, interrupting Mohawk. “Don’t tell him our plan.”

“He’s a little kid,” Mohawk protested. “It doesn’t matter if he knows what we’re going to do, because he can’t do anything with it, anyway.”

“Don’t underestimate the little brat,” the driver said. “He’s the Avengers’ kid; who the hell knows what they taught him?”

Mohawk glared at Tony, like it was his fault Mohawk hadn’t thought about it. “Shut up, kid,” he growled. “Or I’ll gag you.”

Looking around at the dirty rags that littered the floor, Tony nodded, quietly. He was a smart kid; he could keep quiet like they wanted if it meant they didn’t hurt him. 

They drove for what felt like forever before Tony finally felt the van start to slow down. When they came to a stop, Mohawk grabbed Tony and threw him over his shoulder as the side door opened, and Tony got an upside-down view of an old brick building. Some of the windows were broken, others were boarded over, and there was a notice on the door from the city that said condemned. 

Tony really didn’t want to go into that building. Mohawk took him in, anyway. 

Inside the building wasn’t much nicer than the outside. There were old desks and broken chairs, all covered with dust, and holes in the walls where electrical wires stuck out. Glass crunched under Mohawk’s boots as he carried Tony through the building. They went up a set of stairs, the bouncing making Tony nauseous, and then Mohawk pushed open a door and crossed the room, dropping Tony to the floor underneath the window. Tony’s head bounced off the floor as he fell, and he cried out in pain.

“Keep quiet,” Mohawk said, waving his gun at Tony for emphasis. “We don’t want the neighbors to know you’re here.”

Tony nodded again, never taking his eyes off the gun. Satisfied, Mohawk dropped into a chair by the door to wait for his partner, who came into the room a few minutes later with a large duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He dropped the bad on the floor with a heavy thud, kicking Mohawk’s foot out of the way as he closed the door behind him. He also kicked out at Tony as he walked past him, laughing meanly when Tony cringed away from his foot. 

“How long do we give it before we call Barnes?” Mohawk asked. 

“Another couple of hours,” the other man told him. “Let Barnes work up a good sweat over his brat missing, and then we’ll call him. Maybe send him a finger, or something. Let him know we mean business.” 

The men lounged around the tiny room for a while, Mohawk on his chair and the other man on a couch across the room. Tony didn’t dare move while they were in there, just in case one of them decided to make good on the threat to shoot him. But then Mohawk got up and left the room, saying something about a smoke break, and a few minutes later, the second man got up and stalked out of the room without a word. Tony was completely alone for the first time since the men had taken him. This was his chance. 

The window above him was open a crack, and Tony grabbed onto the windowsill and pulled himself to his feet. Shoving at the window with all his strength, Tony managed to push it all the way open, looking outside the building. There was a fire escape a few feet below the window, with rusty stairs that led down to the sidewalk. Some of the stairs were missing, which was scary to think about, but Mohawk and his gun were even scarier; Tony decided he’d rather deal with the stairs. He wasn’t really sure how he’d get down the stairs with his feet tied, but he knew he couldn’t stay in that room any longer. 

Holding tightly to the window, Tony tried to hop his way up the wall, but his feet kept sliding down the brick. Desperate, Tony pulled at the windowsill, like he could pull himself up through the strength of his arms, alone. 

“Hey!” a voice barked behind him, and Tony yelled as someone grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him away from the window, scraping his hands up. As he dangled in midair, he was spun around to see Mohawk holding him up. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Mohawk snapped, shaking him. “Stupid kid.”

“What’s going on?” Mohawk’s partner demanded, as he came back into the room. “I left for five seconds-”

“The brat was trying to climb out the window!” Mohawk told him, giving Tony another shake before dropping him back to the floor. “I say we call Barnes, now. I’m not dealing with this shit any longer.”

Panic took over as Tony remembered their threats to cut off one of his fingers, and he made a futile dash for the door. One of the men grabbed him by the back of the shirt and threw him backward, Tony hitting his head hard on the wall behind him. And as the world went dark around him, Tony closed his eyes and wished for Bucky to find him soon.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for any mistakes in the Russian words; I consulted several different translation sites, but any mistakes are mine.

Bucky clutched his phone in his hand hard enough that he heard the casing crack. On the other end of the line, FRIDAY emitted a soft humming noise in the background to let him know that she was working on trying to find Tony. He was just about to demand, again, what was taking so long, when a voice clearing behind him got his attention. Bucky muted his call with FRIDAY as he turned around to see a security guard waiting for him.

That was option number two, enlisting the help of the park’s security team to help him look, just in case Tony was still somewhere on the grounds. Bucky had gone over as much of the park as he could, but he was still only one person and he couldn’t look everywhere at once. 

“Sir, I understand you’re reporting a missing child?” the security guard asked. “And how old is your son, sir?”

“He’s six,” Bucky answered, ignoring the security guard’s comment about ‘his son’. The longer he spent focused on trivial details was the longer Tony spent lost in the park, or worse. “He’s about yea high,” he added, holding out a hand about waist level, “he’s got black hair, and he’s wearing a red Iron Man shirt and blue jeans.”

“And when did you first notice him missing?” the security guard asked, jotting down Tony’s details on a small pad of paper. 

“About fifteen minutes ago,” Bucky said, still looking around while he was talking, just in case Tony came running up from somewhere. “I looked away for half a second, and then he was gone.”

“We’ll find him, sir,” the security guard reassured him. “Kids get distracted and wander off in the park all the time.”

Bucky was almost positive that wasn’t what had happened with Tony. The kid had shown himself to be mature for his age, and after everything that had happened, Bucky didn’t think he’d just up and wander off somewhere. The only option that seemed plausible was one he didn’t even want to consider. 

“We’ve got every member of security and every non-essential personnel looking for your son,” the security guard went on. “I’m sure we’ll find him in no time.”

Thanking the security guard, Bucky turned his attention back to the call with FRIDAY. She was still emitting that humming noise, and Bucky was practically vibrating with impatience. Finally, FRIDAY clicked back into the call.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she said, “Because of the data Vision sent me about Dr. Richards’ tests, I was able to isolate energy emissions from his device, but the emissions were too degraded for me to track.”

“So we still have no idea where Tony is,” Bucky sighed.

His phone beeped suddenly with an incoming call, and Bucky pulled the phone away from his ear to see ‘Unknown Number’ displayed on the screen. Before he picked up the second call, he returned to his call with FRIDAY. “FRIDAY, if I’m getting a second call on my phone, can you access my phone and find out where it’s coming from?”

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY told him, and Bucky sighed in relief. Finally, something going right for the first time since Tony went missing. 

“I’m going over to the other call, now,” he told her, and then he clicked over to the second call. “This is Barnes.”

“Soldier,” the voice on the other end greeted, and Bucky immediately tensed up. 

“Who the hell is this,” he demanded. 

“You don’t need to be concerned with that,” the man told him. “What you should be concerned with is what we’ll do to your friend if you don’t do exactly what I say.”

“What do you want?” Bucky asked, forcing himself to keep calm as he spoke. “If it’s money-”

“It’s not money,” the man told him, dashing Bucky’s hopes that this was a simple ransom situation. Things got worse when the man continued, “We want you, Soldier.”

HYDRA, then, or some kind of offshoot that wanted to use the Winter Soldier for their dirty work. The kind of people who wouldn’t think twice about hurting a little boy to get him to do what they wanted. Bucky didn’t have a choice, not if he wanted to keep Tony safe. 

“What do you want?” he repeated, and he could almost hear the smile in the man’s voice when he gave Bucky an address. 

After the man hung up, Bucky clicked back over to the phone call with FRIDAY. “That was the person who took Tony,” he said, without preamble. “He wants the Winter Soldier. He gave me an address.”

“You’re going alone,” FRIDAY stated. 

“I don’t have any other choice,” Bucky told her. “Even if I called Steve now, he and the team would never make it back in time. Who else do I have for backup?”

“I may have a solution for you,” FRIDAY told him.

* * *

As he stepped into the alleyway behind the decrepit brick building, Bucky glanced at the roof across the street where his backup waited. A pair of empty armors, piloted remotely by FRIDAY, stood like sentries on the edge of the roof, waiting. 

“Tell me what’s in that building,” he whispered into his phone. 

“Three heat signatures,” FRIDAY reported. “Second floor of the building; all stationary.”

“Bring one of the armors down here to back me up,” Bucky told her. “Keep the other up on the roof for cover fire.”

FRIDAY obliged, sending one of the armors to join him as he slowly, quietly climbed the fire escape. On the second floor landing, he crouched out of sight of the window as FRIDAY hovered off to the side. Peeking up over the edge of the windowsill, Bucky took in the scene inside the room. 

A pair of men were standing around a figure huddled on the floor, one of them poking the motionless figure with a gun. When the man with the gun shifted slightly, Bucky recognized the man who’d been watching him and Tony at the ice cream shop the other day. But he couldn’t see the other man’s face, and he couldn’t see who they were blocking from view. He suspected it was Tony, but he couldn’t act without knowing for sure. 

“FRIDAY, send the second armor down and knock on the door,” he ordered, quietly. “Just a quick thing to get them to move.”

He didn’t look away from the window, but a few seconds later he heard the distant sound of pounding. Just like he was hoping, the men both moved toward the door in response to the sound, and Bucky got a good look at Tony lying unconscious on the floor. He was deathly pale, and there was blood crusted on his temple. 

“Break the door down,” Bucky ordered, never taking his eyes off Tony. “Let’s really get their attention.”

FRIDAY must have really taken his words to heart, because a second later a muffled explosion rocked the entire building. The men swore and the one with the gun sprinted out of the room, leaving his partner alone to watch Tony. Exactly what Bucky was hoping for. 

Bucky exploded through the window in a shower of glass, with FRIDAY a second behind him. He lunged at the man holding Tony hostage, taking him by surprise and breaking a few bones as he drove him into the ground. When the man went for a gun lying on the floor, Bucky stepped on his hand, hearing the delicate bones crack under his boot. The man let out a high-pitched scream that Bucky simply ignored as he reached down and dragged him back up to his feet by the front of his shirt, holding the man at eye level. 

“You kidnapped my friend,” he told the man, who swallowed hard. “You know what I do to people who hurt my friends?”

The man simply smiled at him, blood staining his teeth. “Желание,” he said, and Bucky could feel a familiar vibration starting deep in his bones, a terrible ringing in his ears. “ржaвый, Семнадцать-”

“No,” Bucky gritted out, dropping the man as he backed away, hands over his ears. “I won’t let you do this to me. Not again.”

The man continued, implacable, and Bucky shuddered as agony ripped through his body. He fell to his knees, feeling like he was being ripped apart. Beyond the man, Bucky could see Tony still lying on the floor, the armor crouched protectively over his body. He spared a moment to wonder why FRIDAY hadn’t just grabbed Tony and ran, but it occurred to him that she’d stayed to try and protect him, too. 

The man was still speaking, the trigger words burning their way into Bucky’s skin even as he tried desperately to block them out. He could feel himself starting to slip away. Clawing at his skull, trying to use the pain to keep himself grounded, Bucky could feel blood dripping down the sides of his face. 

“Добросердечный,” the man recited, a triumphant look on his face. “возвращение домой.”

As the final word fell from the man’s lips, Bucky felt a fog settle over his mind-


	10. Chapter 10

“-wake up. Boss, wake up.”

At first, Tony couldn’t figure out who was talking to him. A female voice, one he vaguely recognized. His mommy? No, Bucky said she was gone, and-

“Boss, wake up!”

Tony jerked fully back to consciousness to see something red, and gold, and massive looming over him. For a second he was terrified, but then he saw the familiar blue of the arc reactor that sat in the War Machine armor, and the Rescue, and - Tony reached up and touched the Iron Man armor, the metal warm under his fingers. One of the gauntlets closed over his arm and helped him stand up, steadying him when his legs wobbled. Unsteady, he leaned against the armor for support. 

“Thank you,” he said, wondering who could have been inside the armor, since Rhodey and Pepper were with the other Avengers, and Bucky had told him he was the only one who flew the Iron Man armor. 

“You’re welcome,” the voice said, and now Tony recognized FRIDAY’s voice coming through the suit’s external speakers. “Boss, we need to get out of here. They disabled the other armor; it’s not safe here and you’re in danger.”

Tony didn’t get it; FRIDAY was a lot stronger than his kidnappers, especially with the armor, so why was he in danger? But then he saw Mohawk and Bucky. Mohawk was saying something in a strange language and Bucky was on the floor, his eyes screwed shut in pain, blood running down his face. 

“Bucky!” Tony cried out, but when he tried to get to Bucky, FRIDAY grabbed him around the waist and held him back. “No, let me go! He’s hurting Bucky!”

Hearing him, Mohawk turned around with a nasty smile on his face. He said something else in that strange language while staring triumphantly at Tony. Behind him, Bucky straightened up, his face blank as he stood at attention. 

Mohawk’s partner burst into the room, suddenly, a metal helmet in his hand. “Look what attacked me downstairs!” he ranted, waving the helmet around. “One of Stark’s armors, but he wasn’t inside-” He broke off, seeing the armor that was holding Tony. “What the hell, there’s two of them?”

“Forget it,” Mohawk told him. “The trigger words worked; the Winter Soldier is ours.” Turning to Bucky, he ordered, “Get me that kid.”

Bucky strode forward, hands outstretched, and FRIDAY pulled Tony backward. She shoved him back into the corner, putting the armor between himself and Bucky, hands up and repulsors whining with energy. 

“Sergeant Barnes, stop,” she ordered. “I do not want to hurt you.”

Bucky ignored her, grabbing the armor’s outstretched gauntlet and simply ripping it away from the rest of the suit. FRIDAY hit him with the other gauntlet, forcing him backward several steps. 

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Barnes,” FRIDAY said, powering up the repulsor in the remaining hand, “but I cannot let you continue like this.” Without waiting for Bucky to move any closer, she fired the repulsor with enough force to shoot him across the room and send him crashing into the wall. “Stay here,” she ordered Tony, pushing him back into the corner for emphasis, and then she shot the armor across the room to pin Bucky to the floor. 

As he watched FRIDAY and Bucky fight, Tony realized two things: that Mohawk was slowly heading toward him, arms outstretched, and that the gauntlet that Bucky had ripped off the armor was only a couple inches away from him. Tony grabbed the gauntlet and shoved his hand inside. His older self knew how the gauntlet worked, and he’d been getting those flashes of memory ever since Dr. Richards shot him with the laser, and maybe one of those flashes would tell him how to make this thing go. 

He could feel wires inside the gauntlet and he mashed them together inside his fist, hoping to make enough of a connection with the wires to make the repulsors work. To his delight, the repulsor flickered briefly, enough to make Mohawk stop in his tracks. 

“Put it down, kid,” Mohawk growled at him, menacingly. 

Feeling slightly braver now that he had something to defend himself with, Tony raised the gauntlet and pointed it at Mohawk. “I know how to use this,” he bluffed, hoping that Mohawk didn’t hear his voice shaking. 

“I said, put it down!” Mohawk barked, lunging at him.

Startled, Tony squeezed the wires hard enough to make the repulsor fire a single, short burst of light that hit Mohawk and knocked him backward, into his partner. The two men hit the wall hard enough to make a crack run down from the ceiling, and they didn’t move from where they fell on the floor. Tony really, really hoped they weren’t dead - but he also didn’t want to go over and check. 

A loud crash drew his attention away from the motionless men, and Tony looked up in time to see Bucky throwing the scattered pieces of the suit on the floor. He squeaked in fear as Bucky stalked toward him, and he held up the gauntlet and squeezed the wires again. But this time the repulsor just flickered once before dying, the wires scraping uselessly against the palm of his hand. Bucky reached Tony in a few, quick strides and he grabbed Tony and lifted him into the air. 

“Please, Bucky, no!” Tony begged, dangling from Bucky’s painful grip. “Please put me down!”

As he stared into Bucky’s hard eyes, Tony had never been more scared. Not when he’d woken up in the compound not knowing where he was, not when he was kidnapped - nothing scared him more than realizing that Bucky didn’t recognize him. 

Then he saw something behind Bucky that gave him hope. 

The armor Bucky had fought with was still in pieces on the floor. But in the doorway loomed a second one, eye slits glowing as it lifted a hand and pointed the repulsor at Bucky’s back. The repulsor didn’t fire, and Tony was confused until he realized that FRIDAY didn’t want to hurt him. But if she didn’t fire, Bucky was going to hurt him, so-

FRIDAY seemed to come to the same decision, because the repulsor fired. The bright beam of light hit Bucky squarely in the back, and Tony could feel the energy travel through him to hit Tony, too. And his entire world went white…

* * *

Bucky woke up with a groan to see one of the armors standing over him, repulsor glowing menacingly where it was trained on his heart. Moving slowly so as not to startle FRIDAY, Bucky moved his arms out in front, both to show that he was unarmed, and to block anything she might throw at him. 

“FRIDAY, what’s going on?” he asked, cautiously. 

“Sergeant Barnes, are you yourself, again?” FRIDAY asked, rather than answering. 

“Of course I am,” Bucky told her. “Who else would I-” He broke off suddenly as memories swamped him, and he had to swallow hard against the wave of nausea. “Oh, god. Tony, oh god.”

He shot upright, ignoring the repulsors FRIDAY had pointed at him; she could shoot him if she wanted, just so long as he made sure that Tony was safe. 

“Where is he?” Bucky demanded, feeling frantic with worry. “FRIDAY, where’s Tony?”

“Over here,” a voice called out, and Bucky turned to see Tony - the adult Tony - sitting up and looking around in confusion. “Where the hell are we?” he asked. Looking down at himself, he added, “And why am I naked?”

“There - there was an accident-” Bucky started, not sure how much, if anything, Tony remembered. “We were fighting a giant octopus-”

“Fucking Richards,” Tony interrupted, with a groan. “Yeah, now I remember. I remember everything,” he added, a dark look on his face. 

Tony pushed himself to his feet, stalking over toward Bucky with a scowl on his face. Bucky closed his eyes as Tony got closer, mentally resigning himself to whatever punishment Tony deemed fit to mete out. After what he’d almost done-

When several seconds passed with nothing happening, Bucky opened his eyes to find Tony standing on the far side of the room, poking his kidnappers with a jagged piece of wood he’d grabbed off the floor. Neither men even stirred at the contact, and Tony knelt down and started pulling one of the men’s shoes off. 

“Um-” Bucky started, not entirely sure what he was seeing. 

“I need pants,” Tony explained, “and, frankly, I’m not too concerned if we toss this guy in prison wearing only his boxers.” Having succeeded in pulling the man’s pants off, Tony shimmied into them and cinched the belt around his waist. “Okay, much better.”

“You’re gonna tell me you haven’t woken up naked in worse places than this?” Bucky asked, without thinking, but Tony just grinned. 

“Guilty,” he said, a cheerful note in his voice. “But I still want pants when we call SHIELD to come pick these assholes up. Speaking of - FRI?”

“Contacting SHIELD now,” FRIDAY said. A few seconds later, she added, “Director Carter is sending a team to retrieve the men. They should arrive within half an hour.”

“Great,” Tony replied. “FRI, stand guard, please. Bucky and I will be over here, where it’s slightly more comfortable.” Crossing the room, he dropped onto the ratty couch with a tired sigh. 

Bucky followed, slower. “You want to talk about what happened,” he said, quietly. 

Tony nodded, and then as Bucky braced himself for the anger, the condemnation he knew was coming, Tony asked, “How are you? Are you okay?”

Bucky blinked, absolutely sure he’d heard wrong. “Are you worried about me?” he asked, slowly. 

“Well, yeah,” Tony said, giving him a puzzled look. “Those bastards got in your head. FRIDAY had to shoot you. Of course I’m worried about you.”

“But I-” Bucky broke off, shaking his head in confusion. “I could have hurt you,” he protested. 

“Yeah, you could have,” Tony acknowledged. “But that wasn’t you. And FRIDAY stopped you before anything could happen.”

Bucky had to make Tony understand. “If you remember what I did-” he started.

“You know what I remember?” Tony interrupted him, and Bucky obligingly fell silent so Tony could have his say. “I remember you letting a scared kid cry on his shoulder because my parents were gone. I remember you taking me out for ice cream, and to Coney Island, and teaming up to help me kick Steve’s ass at board games. I remember you being kind, and patient when you didn’t have to be; you could have left me to the rest of the team, but you didn’t. I remember you charging to my rescue.” Spearing Bucky with a sharp look, he added, “And I remember you asking for my help because the last thing you wanted was for someone to be able to use you like this. I don’t blame you for my parents; not anymore. So, why do you think I’d blame you for anything that happened now?”

Bucky was at a loss for words. Tony, for once, seemed content to sit in silence, just waiting for Bucky to make the first move. “I’m really tired of this happening to me,” he finally said, and Tony reached out to briefly squeeze his hand. 

“We’re going to find a way to keep it from happening again,” he vowed. “No matter what it takes; I will not let anyone do this to you, again.” Clearing his throat, Tony looked embarrassed at his sudden outpouring of emotion. “I wonder what’s keeping SHIELD?”

“SHIELD team reports that they are five minutes out, Boss,” FRIDAY spoke up, from where she was looming over the two men. 

“Well, then, let’s make sure we’re downstairs to greet them when they get here,” Tony said, standing. “You wanna haul one of them downstairs, and I’ll get the other?” he asked Bucky. “FRI, can you get the pieces of the other armor?”

A little stunned by the abrupt change in topic, Bucky followed Tony over to where the men were lying. Tony grabbed the shoulders of the taller man and heaved upward, dragging him backward toward the door. As Bucky bent and lifted the other man, slinging him easily over his shoulder, he head the distinctive sound of Tony dragging the first man down the stairs. Going down the stairs with FRIDAY on his heels, Bucky saw Tony dropping his burden in a pile by the front door, kicking the man’s feet out of the way as Bucky joined them and set the second man down. 

“I want to get all of this wrapped up as soon as possible,” he commented. “The faster we’re done with SHIELD, the faster I can go home and take a shower.” With a dramatic shudder, he added, “I feel gross, and I want to wear my own pants.”

Before Bucky could come up with something suitably sarcastic, a knock on the door heralded the arrival of the SHIELD team. They swarmed in and took control of the kidnappers, disappearing into a truck with the now-restrained men. They were in and out in less than five minutes, leaving Tony and Bucky alone on the sidewalk outside the warehouse. FRIDAY tromped over to join them, holding a tied-off tarp containing the pieces of the second suit, and the back of the armor she was controlling slid open. 

“Ready to get the hell out of Dodge?” Tony asked, his voice muffled as he stepped into the armor. Flipping the faceplate up, he held out an arm and added, “If you don’t mind flying sidecar, I can have us back at the compound in a jiffy.”

Bucky stepped into the embrace, wrapping his arm around Tony’s waist to secure himself. “Hey, Tony?” he said, before they took off. “Thank you. For everything.”

The faceplate slammed down, but not before Bucky caught a smile on Tony’s face. “My pleasure,” he said, triggering the repulsors and lifting off into the air. “And speaking of, you and I have a date with the Cyclone to keep.”

“I don’t know,” Bucky said, speculatively, not even bothering to hide the smirk on his face. “You still might not be tall enough.”

Tony’s laughter, loud and joyous, was the best thing Bucky had heard all day.


End file.
